How to Pair Victor Reader Trek with Alexa Echo

The Victor Reader Trek GPS navigator, eBook player, pod catcher, and internet radio now can connect to most any Bluetooth speaker, allowing you to listen to podcasts, books, recorded notes, and streaming internet radio through that wireless speaker. We thus, demonstrate here how to pair Victor Reader Trek with Alexa Echo.

How to Pair Victor Reader Trek with Alexa Summary

In short, the pairing process with an Amazon Alexa Echo smart speaker including the Echo, Echo Dot, and Tap speakers, is summarized as follows: First, get the Victor Reader Trek ready for pairing. Next, turn on Bluetooth pairing mode for the target Alexa speaker via the Alexa app. Finally, on your VictorReader, scan for and connect to your Amazon smart speaker. We detail each of these high level steps below. For this demo, we’ll be pairing our Trek to the Amazon 2nd Generation Echo Bluetooth speaker, as pictured next.

How to Pair Victor Reader Trek with Alexa (Detailed)

1. Power on the Victor Reader Trek

Hold in the round power button, located on the top left side of the Trek, as shown next, until the unit vibrates. Then, wait for the green power-on lamp to illuminate and the Trek to complete booting; it’s fully booted once the welcome message plays and the electronic chime sounds.

Victor Reader Trek navigator, left side view. Showing the power button location and the green power-on lamp glowing. How to Pair Victor Reader Trek with Alexa Echo.

2. Switch Off Airplane Mode if it’s On

With airplane mode on, the Trek will not be able to connect either to Wi-Fi or to Bluetooth devices. So, it’s necessary to assure that airplane mode is turned off. When the online status lamp, as shown next, either glows solidly or is flashing, this means that airplane mode is definitely off and the unit is trying to connect to an in-range Wi-Fi network or Bluetooth device. When the lamp is dark, this COULD mean that airplane mode is on. But it also could mean that, though airplane mode is OFF, that there is nonetheless, no current Wi-Fi connection established. The Trek can indeed be offline (not connected to the internet) even though airplane mode is off.

So, verify that your airplane mode is indeed OFF by pressing and holding the Online button (the circular button with the Wi-Fi symbol in the top row of keys on the front of the unit), until the Trek announces airplane mode status. If it says, “Airplane mode OFF,” then you’re good to go. If it says, “Airplane mode ON,” then press and hold the Online button again until it announces, “Airplane mode OFF.”

Note that you need not be connected to a Wi-Fi network in order to pair with a Bluetooth speaker. However, again, airplane mode MUST be disabled.

Victor Reader Trek DAISY book player, front view. Showing the Online lamp glowing amber, and highlighted. Means that airplane mode is OFF and thus, that the Trek can connect to Bluetooth devices and / or Wii-Fi networks.

3. Enable Bluetooth Pairing Mode on your Amazon Alexa Smart Speaker

by boing into the Alexa app on your mobile device, and choosing the right options.

3a. Find the Alexa App on your Device

We run this demo on an iOS based iPad Air as shown in the next screenshot. In our case, we find the Alexa app on the third home screen page of apps. See this pointed at by the blue arrow.

iOS 11 home screen, showing the Amazon Alexa app Icon highlighted.

3b. Run the Alexa App

The app displays its home screen as shown in the next screenshot.

Amazon Alexa app on iOS, displaying its -Home- screen. Shows the hamburger control highlighted. How to Pair Victor Reader Trek with Alexa Echo.

3c. Tap the Hamburger Shaped Menu Control

Find the hamburger control in the top left corner of the screen, as pointed at by the blue arrow in the previous screenshot.

This brings up the Alexa app’s main menu, as shown in the next screenshot.

Amazon Alexa app on iOS, displaying its control menu, with the -Settings- option highlighted.

3d. Tap the Settings Option on the Main Menu

The blue arrow points at the Settings item in the last screenshot.

This brings up the Settings screen, as seen in the next screenshot. From this screen, choose which Echo speaker currently set up on your Amazon account, you wish to use as a Bluetooth speaker.

3e. Tap the Echo Device you Wish to Pair to your Trek

This takes you to the device-specific settings screen for the Echo speaker you choose. In this demo, we pair to our Thomas’s 3rd Echo speaker. So we tap the speaker circled in blue, in the last picture. Then, we get the following screen.

3g. Tap the Pair a New Device Button

Then the Alexa app displays the Bluetooth Settings screen, as shown in the next picture. At this point, our Alexa smart speaker is broadcasting its name (Echo-C88) over Bluetooth, and waiting to be paired.

Alexa App on iOS, displaying its -Bluetooth settings- screen, with the Ready For Pairing instruction highlighted.

Next, we go to the Victor Reader Trek, scan for, and pair to this speaker.

4. Scan for the Speaker on the Victor Reader Trek

To do that, make sure the unit is working with the online bookshelves. Quickly press and release the Online button until the unit announces, “Online bookshelves.”

Then quickly press and release the * key once and then the 7 key twice (*77). The Trek then says, “Bluetooth”.

Then, quickly press and release the 8 key, until the Trek announces, “Connect to Bluetooth device.”

Finally, press the # (pound) key. This starts the Trek scanning for Bluetooth devices. It then says, “Scanning for Bluetooth devices.” The scan is complete when the Trek says how many Bluetooth devices it discovered, as in, “3 devices found.”

5. Choose your Bluetooth Speaker from the List of Found Devices

Use the 2 and 8 keys to move up and down in the list of found devices, until the Trek says the name of your speaker. In this demo it found our Amazon speaker, named Echo-C88.

6. Connect to your Amazon Alexa Smart Speaker

With the list cursor currently pointing at your Echo speaker, press the # key. This begins the connection process.

After a short pause, the Trek makes a connection with the speaker, saying, “Connected to <your device name>.”

Once the Trek pairs with your speaker, you should now hear any audio that would normally come from the Trek, on that Bluetooth speaker.

Problems You Might See When Pairing

Note that as of this writing, the announcements made by the Trek are sometimes misleading. E.g. When you scan for Bluetooth devices, the list of devices it found does not include your speaker at times. We saw this often. But issuing a second or third device scan will find the speaker. Then it appears in the list of Bluetooth devices as expected.

It also happens that once you find your Alexa speaker in the list, and press the # key to connect to it, the Trek at first says, “Connected to Bluetooth device.” But then a second or two later, it says, “Failed to connect to Bluetooth device.” Again, the answer here is to try the scan and connection again. Do this by pressing the * (star) key to leave the Bluetooth menu, then repeat steps 4 through 6 in this routine. Keep repeating until you establish a Bluetooth connection.

About Previously Paired Bluetooth Devices

Note that once you add your Amazon Alexa speaker to the previously paired devices list in the Trek, your Trek will connect to it again, when it’s Bluetooth is turned on and that speaker is ON and in Bluetooth range.

Check out the audio demo we recorded here, that shows via example, how to pair and unpair the Trek from an Amazon Echo smart speaker.